A snowballs chance in Tete

The “time of heat” has officially arrived here in Tete – which I’ve been completely dreading.  And let me tell you, this was no slow transition. Seriously, it probably went from “cool-ish” to “oh my god I’m going to die” hot  in about a week.  Fans are on full blast, heating bath water is a thing of the past, and windows are flung wide open…..except for those in the dining room and kitchen…. Someone is too concerned with dust getting in to enjoy a breeze, cough cough Eduardo.

All this heat means that mango season is right around the corner (!!!!!) and that ‘crazy thirst’ is too. Let me explain what “crazy thirst” is: its pretty simple. When you’re walking all the way back to our house or standing at the chapa stop in Matema (aka the hottest place on earth) crazy thirst hits you like a ton of bricks.  You realize how unbelievable thirsty you are, how there is nothing available to drink, how you are sweating profusely…and it consumes your mind.  It is something I NEVER felt in the states. If you’re that hot, you go in some air-conditioning or you get a glass of ice water. NADA. That’s not an option here. 

What is an option, is a can of cold Orange Fanta. Cue, what we like to call “the lesson that will never be learned.”  Here’s what happens : you’re withering in the sun at the chapa stop – praying one will stop and you can squeeze on.  Crazy thirst hits you, and its bad. You’re about 10 feet away from a number of crianças (children) peddling cans of cold Fanta. And you just can’t resist. So you flip the shoe-less 8 year old 25 mets and pop open the Fanta. At this point, it goes down in less than three gulps – and it’s AMAZING.  You feel satisfied for about 5 minutes. And then, you get hit with a second wave crazy thirst – but this time, it HAS to be water.  And that, is the lesson that will never be learned. You always drink the Fanta – and it always makes you even more thirsty that before.

Maybe you’re thinking that there has to be a solution to this problem (…. Mom).  So you suggest taking a bottle of water with you in the morning.  This will not work…. The water will be at a quasi-boil by the time you need it. Maybe you could buy some water instead of Fanta at the chapa stop? Well yes, people are there selling chilled water.  The water that they’re selling, however, is not treated….. we boil and filter all of our drinking water at home…. And this water is not.  And I’m not really in the mood for parasites, so that’s out of the question. 

I think my new method this season, will be to buy a bottle of cold water at one of the bancas close to our school. Then just carry it with me on my way home. That way, when crazy thirst hits – I’m prepared!

Back to school

My family left Moz on a Thursday, and Dom Bosco started classes again the next Monday.  Granted, I’d seen a lot of my students during our five week break – especially when my family was there – but it was SO awesome to see everyone. I don’t know if it was that we were all excited to see each other (and by we, I mean me and the students), but I’m marking that week down as my best week ever teaching. It was like a little (non creepy) second-honeymoon every time I walked into a classroom! My lesson plans worked out perfectly, there was no fighting or bickering, they seemed to be listening and understanding…. Bottom line, two big thumbs up for the first week back.

Also, Helen and I started giving English lessons to Padre Pedro (the director/principal of our school).  I wrongly assumed he didn’t speak much English, but it turns out he does! He just has a really thick Spanish accent.  So basically, one of us sits down with him for thirty minutes a day to have a conversation in English and read some of a book.  At first it was Lord of the Rings – but recently its been parts of a Catholic mass. Apparently he’s going to start giving mass in English pretty soon and he’s not entirely comfortable with it yet. So, unlike Lord of the Rings (which I never read) I’ve heard this a million times. Ha!

Mozambique has taught me to run on my own time….

Hence why I’ve been so absent. Around here, if you don’t really feel like doing something… well, it will just have to wait! Which is not to say that life has slowed down in the least.  The biggest thing that’s happened lately is that my family visited!! Seriously, 10 months without seeing those goons – well it was great! (Totally kidding, I missed them like crazy and was stoked to see those smiling faces!)

Here’s what happened…. I left Moatize and bopped around Moz for a while by myself.  A REDES meeting in Chimoio (and a little pre-birthday celebration) = awesome. A 14 hour bus ride without having slept (post pre-birthday celebration) and without an actual seat – just a stool in the aisle = the opposite of awesome. Being reunited with one of my best friends from training who I haven’t seen since I was tossed in the back of a Peace Corps land rover (crying) after swear-in = amazing!!! (not the crying part, that was actually really sad).  A forth of July party that included a bon fire, burgers and french fries, and a football = great. Hanging out with Michelle’s awesome students and boyfriend, eating homemade Mozambican food for my birthday and catching up on Glee … well, I have no complaints about that

Then, Michelle and I headed to Maputo to play for a few days – with the help of Mark, Eddie and Ryan (SOOO great to see everyone).  And from there I hopped on a plane to South Africa.

I apparently am in my own little heat bubble up here in Tete and therefore had no IDEA that it was actually cold in South Africa. So showing up in the Jo’berg airport with sandals and a light jacket when people had on long coats was embarrassing (not as embarrassing as the fact that I put on socks with my sandals…… it was that cold).  Anyways, I hung around a hotel lobby for about 6 hours waiting for my room and I’m pretty sure people thought I was crazy – but I’m accustomed to waiting and I sure as hell wasn’t about to walk outside in the cold again.  Then I finally checked in, took and excessively long shower (I mean, I hadn’t showered since March – I deserved it slashhh I needed it) and passed out in an oversized hotel bed. And who should come knocking on my door – BUT MY ENTIRE FAMILY!!!!!!!!!

The next morning we headed to Kruger Park where we had an AMAZING safari.  Not only did we stay at this super fancy beautiful “camp” (it was in no way a camp), but we saw all kinds of awesome animals. Elephants, rhinos, hippos, antelope, buffalo, giraffes, hyenas and a whole pride of lions – seriously, so cool! I’ll upload some pictures as soon as I can, because they’re AWESOME!

From Kruger, we went to Maputo (the capital of Mozambica).  I took the fam to this awesome fish market (you can buy all kinds of fresh seafood and then they cook it for you there) and the big craft market (which is where all of your Christmas presents are coming from!). 

Also, we went to Namaacha for a day to visit Mama Joana! After I drug everyone around the muddy, rainy village, we finally found her at the market where she was selling her big cauldrons. This is the first time I’ve seen her since I moved to Tete, and she was super excited to meet my family. She insisted we come back to her house for some fried eggs, which of course we did. She’s just a warm and strong lady and I’m so glad my family got to meet my Mozambican mom! Plus it was a fun little experience translating back and forth between her and my mom! 

Then, after an entire day of sitting in the airport (because LAM is lame) we finally made it to Tete! This day, which happened to be my parents anniversary, was a little touch-and-go for a while…. But nothing a little GingerNut cookies and some Mozambican beer with my mom, dad, and brother couldn’t fix! We rented a car at in Tete – which worked out perfectly. There was no way we were going to use chapas the whole time.

The first real place I took them was my school (of course).  Helen had been keeping my kids updated on my travel progress – and seeing as these boys have been looking forward to meeting my family for months now –  they were Sooooo excited!!  My brother Christian was a huge hit.  He walked into a classroom and not only did they all cheer, but they immediately challenged him to an arm wrestling competition.  It was pretty cute… and now I’m constantly fielding questions like “Ummm…. Teacher? Can we call Cristiano?”  (“you remember that my family only speaks English, right?” “Yes teacher we remember! I will say ‘Good Morning Ms. Charlie, I am student of teacher Carolina’”).

Other highlights included…

-  a picnic down by the river with some of my students and the other Tete PCVs

- a basketball game with my welders (they made my dad and my brother play on opposite teams --- they were both a solid foot taller than any Mozambican man around)

- Tours of all the workshops at school  - which ended with Char getting some goodies (a new purse from the fashion girls and some candleholders from the welders)

- what Helen and I are calling “char’s extreme home makeover”  - a clean house, some new grown-up furniture and a very nicely decorated room

- a suitcase FULL of birthday goodies!! New clothes, some spices, the works

- all kinds of wonderful meals and a sweet non-chapa ride (heyyyy kia rio!)

Lastly, and most importantly, my main highlight was just seeing them!!! I get to talk to them on the phone about once a week – but even an hour a week of explaining my life here doesn’t come close to what it needs.  But now, they’ve been here! They’ve seen the way my life is here and the way people in my village live. And that’s so awesome.  (It’s a game changer, if you will) I think it’s a comfort for them – they know I’m being looked after.  And its certainly a comfort for me – I can talk to them about things here, and they actually know what I’m talking about! Plus, they reminded me of things I initially loved about Mozambique that I’d forgotten about…And now I’m noticing and appreciating those things again!!

Ok sorry this has been long and scattered – but there’s still a lot to tell!! Hope everyone back stateside is happy and healthy!

Gestures

Seeing as Portuguese is obviously not my first language, I have a new appreciation for any and all hand gestures.  And lucky for me, Mozambicans have some pretty sweet little moves they do!

- Lots of people here are fans of the double wave – which I love. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, refer to the scene in Love Actually where Hugh Grant (the Prime Minister) gets out of his car and waves to the public.  To do the double hand wave – you first need to stop walking, put on a biggg smile and frantically wave both hand. 

- We are also all about the double cheek kiss over here. I’m pretty sure I always have a big smile on my face when I do the cheek kiss.  It’s just so friendly, I can’t help it!

- The “left hand to right elbow” move  is a big one. Any time you accept something (like a gift) or shake someone’s hand, you put your left hand on your right elbow as you receive/shake with the right hand.  It’s a sign of respect.

- the “criança” (child) signal.  This is when you make a little cup with your hand and then use said hand to indicate height (and therefore age) of a child.  For example, “my little brother is coming to Africa” would necessitate a cupped hand at chest level – not so young (and if I was indicating the actual height of my little brother it would be wayyy above my head!). BUT. “When I was 4 I fell got this scar on my arm” would be a cupped hand below the hip. 

- the sun dial.  This and the criança move are my personal favorites.  Basically, this is a way of indicating time.  Maybe I want to know what time our basketball game is this Saturday and Crispen (one of my students) wants to tell me to be at school by 8 am. So he’ll make a squinty face (important) and look at the sky. Then he’ll make a blade with his hand and point at where the sun will be at that time. “Teacher, come to school at 8 (about a 25º angle) and we will go home at ummmmmm 12 (90º angle with arm straight up in the air). ”  Perhaps this is why we have trouble starting on time around here lol!

Culture and Education

Normally my blog posts are just to update my friends and family at home about my life here in Mozambique. I’m not a “writer” per se and anyone who knows me well, knows that words don’t just flow out of my mouth in a particularly eloquent way.  But yesterday I found myself in the middle of a conversation so interesting, I almost wished I was at Rhodes so I could use it to write a paper (not a bio lab report paper, but a paper that would normally scare the pants off of me and magically consume an entire week of my time).  Anyways, this fictional paper would focus on the clash of culture and education levels in Mozambique. Basically, what happened is this…

This week, all of the teachers at our school have been attending a mandatory “formação” or training geared to Salitian schools.  Yesterday’s enthralling topic: conflict resolution.  Conflicts with other professors, conflicts with the director, conflicts with students and mediating student-student conflicts.  I have sat through my fair share of peace corps training session about such things and I have also sat through many a Mozambican meeting where people talk just to hear their own voice. Needless to say, I was not thrilled to be stuck in the collision of these two. 

After we broke into groups to discuss a few questions (“do we learn from our conflicts? Why?” and “what tools do we have to resolve our conflicts?”), we discussed them as a group. This is when I stopped doodling and started actually writing down what people were saying.

 The first professor who spoke made the comment that education is our tool – it is the greatest tool we have and therefore lets us better solve our problems. To which another professor negated by saying that his parents had very little education and his grandparents never saw a book, let alone a school in their lifetime – and they still managed to resolve their conflicts.  It was and still is our culture and it is our history, he said (sidenote: Mozambicans are very proud people and when they get going on “a nossa maneira” or “our way” it tends to be a long and prideful conversation).  Keep in mind: Mozambique is so underdeveloped because of its recent history of war. First for independence from the Portuguese and then a very long civil war (which didn’t end until the early 90’s).  Social infrastructures – like schools- are just now getting on their feet, so to speak. Regardless, the man was making the point that you don’t need an education to solve your problems.  This was then answered by another teacher who gave the example of Mozambican families who live out in the bush.  If the parents of that family had attended school –and recognized how valuable it really was – they probably wouldn’t marry off their 12 year old daughter before she got to the 8^th grade (which is very common in many parts of the country – its just the culture, whether you agree with it or not). And she probably wouldn’t allow the same thing to happen to HER daughter.

So now we have this conflict between the very respected culture and the history and the “way” of the Mozambican people,  and tools that education can provide to move forward. And to top it off, we’ve tossed the ever-present gender issue into the equation.  Another professor then posed the question: well does the girl from the bush not want to go to school and study because she’s not from a “culture” of education? Or is she an equal of the 12 year old girl in the city who will make it to at least 10^th grade? The next man who spoke said the, yes, the girls are surely equal and deserve the same opportunities. 

I guess these are just some of the challenges of developing a country.  I see the same thing all over Moatize – which is a becoming a boomtown because of the mines.  There are tons of little mud houses surrounded by goats and old women cooking on little carvão grills with babies on their backs and half dressed kids running around. And right next to the mud house is a huge industrial building with foreigners in air-conditioned, GPS equipped Ford trucks – who are employing the sons of the old women in the mud houses.

OK, I’m not sure where I’m going with this now – but I thought it was worth sharing.   

25 de Junho

Mozambicans celebrate their Independence Day on June 25 (this year marked 36 years of freedom) which happened to be a Saturday.  Helen and I went to the town square are where people were gathered with drums and banners.  We also happened to be their when the governor of Tete rolled in (in his 6 car entourage, with a BMW….) and stuck around for the national anthem before heading home. 

That Friday, Eduardo (our other roommate) had explained to us the importance heads at parties. Yes. Heads. As in cow head, pig head, goat head.  Apparently, every good party or wedding (or anything worth celebrating) needs a head. So, Saturday morning when we came home we were greeted by a giant cows head.  I’m talking, a full on head. Just chopped off.

Then the testosterone fest started.  Cooking is very much a “woman’s” job in Mozambique, but the head…. That’s a different story. Cooking a head is a man’s job.  So Eduardo, one of his friends from work, the father and teenage son of the family with live near, and some other random boys got to work on the head.  First they built a fire with some bricks set up in it to singe all of the hair off the head. Then spent a good deal of time with an axe chopping the head into small enough pieces to fit in a large pot.  Basically, the entire head was boiled with just water and salt (as not to spoil its natural delicious flavors…. So I was told).  Then, they waited.  Senour Janeiro – the dad of the family, and oldest member of the “head crew”- was presented with a small plate of brain and tongue to taste test.  Once he had given the OK, everyone was served a small bowl.  At this point, Helen  and I were forced to join the bro-fest.  Apparently, head at a party is like cake at a party (everyone has to receive at least a bite…… “you don’t turn down birthday cake, do you?!”) and no one can leave before the head is served. Once again, “do you leave a wedding reception before the bride and groom cut the cake?” (…..got it, Eduardo. I understand that you’re going to make me eat the head).  So, Helen and I sat outside with all of the men and tried the head … which I covered in piri-piri (hot chili sauce).

Not exactly fireworks, popsicles and burgers on the grill… but another interesting moment here in Mozambique.

run the world girls

I think I mentioned the “REDES weekend” in a previous post – but basically, REDES is a group for high school aged girls in Mozambique that promotes healthy and successful futures.  It was a Peace Corps initiated group that has existed nationwide for some years now.  Even though my school is mostly boys, I thought that the girls at Dom Bosco could really benefit from a program like this.  So when I offered to host a weekend “troca” for the four groups in Tete (like a mini conference) at our school, I figured it would be a good way to get the ball rolling. But ohhhhh the joys of hosting 50 people for a weekend!

Helen and I did a pretty good job of getting all of our shopping done the weekend before everyone arrived.  All of our market friends were moreee that happy to help with our food needs (“we need 200 pieces of bread” “Two, you usually buy two” “Yes, I know, but I need two HUNDRED”).  So the supplies took over our dining room as tens of kilos of rice and beans and whatnot piled up.

Naturally, the Friday that every one was to arrive, I overslept for my class (way to start the day Audrey) and ran out the door without washing my face and with 3 kilos of dried fish in my backpack. (You know how in cartoons there’s a dog with a steak on a fishing pole and the pole is tied to his back? So he’s constantly chasing a steak that’s dangling in front of his nose? That was me, but in reverse. I kept walking faster and faster trying to escape the smell of dried fish, but it was chasing me on my back!) Anyways, I made it to class, dropped off the fish and headed home to take a bath before I had to clean the conference room where we were staying and having our activities.

Figuring things could only go up from there – Helen and I went back to school to help the girls clean.  They immediately sassed me about the condition of the dried fish – apparently it can not be left in a plastic bag (let alone 5 plastic bags) because it will become moist and spoil. Right, of course – I clearly have no idea what I’m doing with this fish. Which was very unfortunate, seeing as the guy I was paying to cook for us for the weekend was no where to be found. AND, the gem that he is, not only did he leave, he left with the keys to all of the kitchen supplies. 

So I’m running around our school (which I’m realizing is giant) trying to find someone to help with the food situation. The other 40 people should be arriving now and we need to get  start the dinner process. I happen to run into our director on his way out, and he informs me that the water has been shut off to our entire school. Are you kidding me?! I have 50 people living at this school for the weekend, and we don’t have water? How are we going to cook this food? How are they going to take baths (God knows they love taking baths)? These girls have been on a chapa for 4 hours and I don’t have water for them to drink?! (my frustration level is now seriously on the rise).

So after furiously begging the Padres to help me (sidenote : the Bishop has showed up for a weekend visit – unexpectedly.  So they, too, were in way over their heads), and being denied I had an unfortunate display of emotion.  I don’t think anyone reallyyy knows what to do with a crying girl – let alone a crying American girl in front of her older, male, Mozambican colleagues. Anyways, my only solution to the water problem was to send my own girls out with 20L jugs to find and carry water back to the school.  They were not thrilled, to say the least, but they pulled through! AND, the other Mozambican women that were there whipped some dinner for everyone – sans hired-cook.  Way to go girls of Mozambique! Ha!

Since we just had one giant conference room to use for the weekend, everyone brought their own straw mat and camped out on the floor.  It was vaguely reminiscent of a grade school slumber party, and I literally thought they (and as a result, everyone) would NEVER sleep. But they did, and in typical Mozambican form were up at 5 am.  Little did they know that since they were the first to wake up, they were the lucky ones who got to carry water! ……. Not. They were really tired of me dragging them out to get water. I was tired of it too.

The weekend ended up being a huge success for all of the girls. They made amazing purses out of capulanas, had lessons on sexual health, HIV/AIDS and pregnancy (which is extremely beneficial for them), played soccer and basketball, and planned their “beautiful and healthy futures.”  We ate delicious food. Each group performed some bad ass dances - in the dark, because the electricity went out - and had an all out dance party. 

Even though it was a logistical NIGHTMARE (I couldn’t bend the fingers on my hands until Wednesday) and I don’t think I’ve ever been so exhausted, it was worth it knowing that the girls who participated loved it!

PS. Did you know that the dancing in Beyonce’s new video for “run the world girls” is inspired by a Mozambican dance group?! They can danceee!!